"I Know My Father Will Find Me": The Rebbe's Shluchim

This weekend the Rebbe's emissaries are gathering in Brooklyn from all over the world. This army of “Soul Seekers,” over five thousand strong across the globe, was and continues to be a rare once-in-a-generation gift to the Jewish world. Imagine the depth of love in the heart of this Rebbe for whom the motto “build it and they will come” was merely a starting point. He was unique in his time for expressing what seemed like an even deeper kinship with those who had moved further from their roots. “Just because a person distances himself from the community doesn’t make them ‘distant’”—he fundamentally abhorred the term “Kiruv Rechokim” (outreach to those who are distant from Judaism). He peered into the generational soul and saw fear where others saw distance, and saw loneliness where others saw indifference. He shared his findings with his Shluchim. Armed with this data, they moved beyond the starting point. “Build it and THEY will come” became “build it and WE will come.” “We will seek you out in love and together we will celebrate the boundless joy and light of Yiddishkeit.”

I was at a wedding recently, and a North Shore woman approached me and asked me if I remembered her. It turns out that she was my daughter Adina's preschool teacher. She then told me this story. Basically, I went to pick her up from school and she wasn’t where I expected her to be. They told me she hadn’t been dropped off. After my initial panic, the misunderstanding was quickly cleared up and off I went to collect Adina a few moments late. The teacher said that my daughter turned to her after all the kids had already been picked up and said, “I know my father will find me.”

The Rebbe was the father of all those children who ended up in the wrong room, yearning so desperately to be found. The Shluchim are the ones he entrusted to never rest until every Jew has been found and welcomed home.